The NCAA basketball tournament starts up this week. If your team is already out, or you’re only half-heartedly rooting for your team (Sigh. Go Duke.), we are offering you a different contest to take part in. And this is better than the NCAA tournament, because you’re not just a sixth man watching from the sidelines; you get to determine the course of the tournament through voting.

We’ve held March Madness NCAA-tournament style competitions before. UVA won the 2007 competition for coolest law school, and last year Latham eked out a victory over Cleary for coolest law firm.

Since Latham recently, um, cut a number of players from its team, we don’t think we can let it keep its crown, so we’re revisiting Biglaw firms with the 2009 ATL March Madness tournament. But rather than comparing “cool,” in a nod to the current climate, we are comparing “safe.” We bring you….

ATL MARCH MADNESS FOR LAW FIRMS!!! WHICH FIRM IS THE SAFEST???

We’ve set up brackets based on Vault seeds. Thirty-two firms are entering the tournament. We invite you to vote on which firms are better at lay-ups than layoffs. At which firm are you least likely to lose your job?

Are you a junior to mid-level corporate/finance associate who has been contemplating a move to (or within) Washington, DC? In response to increased deal activity requiring “NY (or like-kind) trained” corporate associates, the Washington, DC corporate/finance market is experiencing an unusually high demand for your skills. Read more, and check out www.g-s.com.

When was the last time you took a second look at your student loans? If you’re like most borrowers, you probably try hard not to think about them. After all, dwelling on your debt isn’t going to make it go away any faster. Or is it?

We’ve all heard how dysfunctional entry-level legal recruiting is: Inordinate expense, decisions made on the briefest of subjective impressions with opacity all around, and what do firms reap for all their efforts? Shocking attrition rates among junior associates. It’s time for a conference on what could work better, and this is it.

Kinney is currently running an exclusive search for an Asia GC role at a well known tech start-up company, based in Shenzhen. This company has received significant recent praise for their new smart phone device in leading medial outlets, such as the New York Times, TIME, Mashable, Wired, Yahoo, and Forbes, among others.